1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a control circuit board, a control system, and a copying method.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, image forming apparatuses such as copiers and multifunction peripherals (MFPs) store user-defined setting information and the like in a nonvolatile memory contained on a control circuit board (hereinafter, “board”). In an event of failure of the board on which this nonvolatile memory is contained, there arises the need of adjusting settings of a new board to the user-defined setting information.
There are known techniques related to this need. For example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2003-323298 discloses a technique for backing up data stored in a nonvolatile memory of a failed board by: fabricating a maintenance board, which is a board containing a nonvolatile memory for use in extracting data from the memory; copying the data stored in the nonvolatile memory of the failed board to the nonvolatile memory of the maintenance board; and writing the data to a nonvolatile memory contained on a new replacement board.
However, such a conventional backup technique requires fabricating a maintenance board. In addition, it is required to distribute the maintenance boards to service personnel around the world because board failure can occur everywhere in the world. The conventional technique is disadvantageous in involving not only a considerably large amount of operations for maintenance management but also an increase in maintenance cost.
Therefore, there is a need for a control circuit board, a control system, and a copying method capable of facilitating maintenance management and reducing maintenance cost by eliminating the need of fabricating such maintenance boards.